New Nest
by Ardna
Summary: Tony, Steve, Natasha, and Bruce are all living in Avengers Tower now... but will Clint ever move in? Not-so-much a one-shot anymore.
1. Chapter 1

"Me, Banner, Rogers, and now Romanoff…" Tony counted off on his fingers. "Thor can't be here because he has his own palace on another planet." He frowned. "He's still gotta show me what they've got for tech up there." He looked back down at the count on his fingers, and with another frown tapped his pinky and thumb together. "Barton still hasn't shown up."

"Barton won't show up," Natasha said definitively, glancing away for a moment from the set of knives she was sharpening. Tony was certain she had too many knives in that set for it to possibly be just a set.

"Why not?" Steve wondered. "I mean, I know all of us are known for being loners, but we're here. So why not Barton too?"

Natasha shook her head. "You wouldn't understand." She hesitated at Steve's prompting. "It's… a sniper thing, sort of."

"Barton's a sniper?" Bruce asked in surprise, actually distracted long enough to tear his eyes off the article he was reading on gamma radiation.

"Well, with his eyeball, what else is he going to be?" Tony pointed out. "Certainly explains why he doesn't talk. At all."

"Barton talks," Natasha said, her voice protesting. Her lips twitched very slightly in a smile. "A little."

"Is he not a native English-speaker?" Tony asked, smirking.

"I'm not, and I talk plenty," Natasha replied smoothly. "Barton knows enough people who'll smart-aleck their ways into the grave. Maybe he just figured there was enough noise without him adding to the racket."

"You certainly seem to know Barton pretty well," Tony remarked, eyebrows bouncing suggestively.

Natasha stared at him, then pointedly lifted her knife. "In case you hadn't noticed, Mr. Stark, I have been sharpening knives for the past hour. Do you really want to start insinuating that I'm involved with my coworkers?"

"If you attack me, does that mean I'm right?" Tony grinned.

"Natasha! Tony!" Steve exclaimed in alarm. "We just saved the world, do we really have to go back to trying to kill each other again?"

"But it was so much more fun that way," Tony said, his sarcasm threatening to drown the Captain.

Steve shook his head in exasperation, finally opting to leave the room before things got more chaotic. Bruce picked up his laptop and moved to follow. Steve paused at the door and looked over at Natasha.

"Are you sure Barton won't come?" he asked.

Natasha looked at him and shook her head. Steve seemed disappointed. Strangely enough that was how Tony felt, too. He _had_ gone through the trouble of redesigning entire floors of Stark Tower for The Avengers, and to have one of them not show up was frankly insulting.

Oh well. The birdboy was going to do what he wanted. Tony didn't care.

-0-

"Sir, there has been a security breach."

Tony jerked awake, a bad idea when one has inhaled enough martinis to kill a horse, and held his head on with one hand while he blindly staggered about in search of his suit.

"Left, sir."

Tony grumbled incoherently, sounding that sounded vaguely like "blehruhuh", but no one would ever be sure. Iron Man was the last to stumble out into the hall, joining Captain America in his PJs, a befuddled Bruce Banner, and an irritatingly wide-awake Black Widow.

Standing at the end of the hallway with the various weapon paraphernalia pointed at him (Tony wasn't entirely sure that Bruce even knew what he was doing with that laptop) was Clint Barton.

Clint was naturally unbothered by the threat to his wellbeing. His left hand held a black satchel, his right a violin case. Tony squinted. Surely the birdboy couldn't be musical?

Natasha swore at Clint in Russian and lowered her gun. "Seriously, Barton, you couldn't have waited for a better time? Like the _morning?_"

"It is morning," Bruce said. "3:00am."

They glared at him.

"I heard you had a room available," Clint said simply.

Tony looked at him blankly for a moment before realizing that he was the one being addressed. "Uh, yeah," he said. "I do. Have a room available. Your room."

Clint's head tilted slightly at Tony's poor sentence structure, and in that moment he looked so much like a bird Tony simply could not stop laughing.

Clint glanced over at Natasha. She shook her head and explained, "He's still drunk from last night." She pointed. "Your room's over there."

Clint nodded and started in the direction indicated. He paused when he noticed Bruce's curious and almost dreading look.

"That's not a violin in there, is it?" Bruce said.

Clint looked at him for a moment. "No," he replied, and walked away.

No one accompanied him to his room, and Clint didn't mind. He opened the door that wasn't locked and walked in without turning on the lights. The floor-to-ceiling window that took up one wall let in plenty of light through the part that wasn't curtained.

Clint tossed his satchel onto the bed, which he frowned at for a moment before sighing in resignation. He'd get the hammock up later. The violin case he carefully set down on top of a dresser.

He went over to the window for a moment, and stared out at the cityscape. It was just high enough up here that he couldn't make out the faces of the people below.

"Natasha," he greeted his teammate without turning around.

"Barton," Natasha replied, coming up alongside him. They looked through the window in silence for a moment, then she looked over at him. "You need any help?"

"No," Clint answered. A spy never needed help.

Natasha nodded understanding. "You won't have to hide so many of your weapons here," she told Clint. "Easier access."

Clint nodded. "I don't like this window," he said.

Natasha agreed. "Too big."

"But it's nice."

"Yeah. Nice." Natasha turned away. "Good night, Barton." She walked out of sight. "See you tomorrow," she said at the door.

"See you," Clint said quietly.

Natasha left, closing the door behind her. Clint stayed by the window for a little longer, then closed the curtains the last bit and spent the night sleeping cross-legged on top of a dresser.

It was so strange to smell coffee when he woke up.


	2. Seven

_**Author's notes:** So. This _was_ a one-shot, anyway. But people started asking for followups, and well... it's the fifth. Of December. And for Clint, that means something very personal._

_**Warnings:** none.  
_

* * *

Clint hadn't said much all day. He had often been found in obscure perches throughout the Tower, staring out the massive windows at the fog-shrouded city below. His blue eyes were melancholy yet still held no solid expression.

Far into the night, nearing the end of the twenty-four hours that make a day, Clint stood out alone on the massive walk hanging out from the tower, whipped by the freezing wind. Clint seemed unbothered, the collar of his black jacket popped up, or perhaps something else was bothering him too much for him to notice it.

"Tasha," he quietly acknowledged his fellow assassin as she stepped silently beside him. He had known she was coming; somehow Clint always knew. He was certain it was the same for her. Perhaps it came from being in each other's presence so much of the time.

"Barton," Natasha replied calmly. She coiled her scarf around her throat more snugly. Her pale eyes glanced over at him. "Are you going to tell me what's been eating you all day?"

"You couldn't use your superspy powers to figure that out yourself?" Clint quipped. Natasha kicked him lightly in the ankle, her intense gaze unwavering, and Clint's expression of amusement flickered out. His eyes swept over the city once again, and he seemed to be reminding himself of something. Or convincing himself.

"I'm not a mind-reader, you know," Natasha said.

Clint sighed, releasing a jet of white cloud. "Seven months, Natasha," he said. "It's been seven months to the day since Coulson died."

Natasha looked away, surprising herself when she realized her eyes were misting. "I know."

"Christmas is coming," Clint continued, his eyes fixed on a decorated tree beyond Natasha's sight. "It won't be the same this year. Coulson—"

"Sh," Natasha stopped Clint, on impulse covering his mouth with her hand. "Enough of that."

"Phil will be here," a new voice surprised the two, and they turned around to see Pepper, accompanied by Tony and the rest of the Avengers, who hadn't gone to rest after all. "Phil's always going to be here with us."

Pepper walked out onto the balcony, flanked by the Avengers—some days Clint thought she had more command over them than Fury did. When she shivered in response to the cold, Tony immediately shrugged off his coat and slipped it around her shoulders. If anyone needed more sign that Pepper Potts was an extraordinary woman, it was the fact that for her, Tony could actually behave like a gentleman.

He walked up to Clint and pressed a glass into his hand, which Clint instantly recognized as Coulson's favorite drink. Steve did the same for Natasha, and Clint noticed that everyone out on the frozen walk held a drink in their hand, the same drink.

"You didn't think we'd forget, did you?" Tony remarked. He glanced at his glass, then at Clint. "You take the honors, Agent Barton."

Clint held his glass aloft to the city, missing so many lights but shining all the same, and every man and woman there did the same. "To Phil."

"To Phil!" all strongly echoed, and the glasses were thrown back. In silence the group of seven stood in memory of the man who had truly given everything away for the thing he had still believed in, to the very last moment: heroes.

Clint turned and smiled, and though it was small and wavered at the edges, it was genuine. And he realized that now, to him anyways, these people really were teammates. He could almost see Coulson nod in approval, his neutral smile appearing in its rightful place. _Good call, Barton._

Back into the Tower they went, but Clint paused and looked out over the city again, Natasha stopping at his side. Looking at her, he said, "I'm never going to stop missing him."

"Me neither," Natasha replied. "He was my second real friend."

"I know, Nat," Clint said, and one could catch a glimpse of the cocksure and defiant archer he had been in younger days, a fool of a man capable of choosing different paths than had been laid out. "I was there."

They stepped inside and the chill was swept off their shoulders.


End file.
